PART I THE VALLEY

CHAPTER ONE

§ 1

The George was King George the Third, and the Crown was Queen Anne’s Crown, and they faced each other across the street of Bullockdean. The George had a face of stucco, cracked and discoloured with age and the mists of the Ouse Valley, and a parapet behind which its old roof rose rakish and wrinkled. The Crown’s face was of ruddy brick, gashed with long, deep-set windows, and topped by a huge pediment of new-painted whiteness.

So close and friendly were they that from one bar-parlour you could almost see what was going on in the other—that is, if you cared to look; but on the whole the doings in the bar of the George had very little interest for the bar of the Crown, and contrariwise. The Crown catered chiefly for sedate farmers and good class visitors from Lewes, Newhaven and Eastbourne—the George catered for the rowdier elements of all three towns, which frequented it at race-time, and the more disreputable, poaching class of farm-labourer. The only occasion when the two inns had had any manner of warfare was when Mr. Munk, the landlord of the Crown, sent over a dignified protest at the noise made by the George’s dispersing drunks at closing-time; whereat Mr. Sheather, the landlord of the George, had retorted that the sight of the Crown’s lady visitors undressing with the blind up was demoralizing his family.

On the whole the neighbourhood disapproved of the George and approved of the Crown, though both were equally frequented by different elements of local society. The stain on the George’s sign was drunkenness, and, it was whispered, betting too. Still, as everyone said, what could you expect from a man like Tom Sheather, who had gone roving in his youth and brought back a wife from foreign parts? It was his own fault if the George was but a sorry pub, while the Crown was very nearly an hotel, with visitors staying all the summer. Visitors would never stay at the George, even if there was room for them, which there was not. Tom Sheather filled the place up with his roughs, such as decent farmers would not drink with. He’d have racing-men from Lewes, a drunken, sharky lot—he’d have sailormen from Newhaven, making a night of it in a hired shay. The Oddfellows had given up meeting at the George ever since the crew of a Margate trawler had insisted on playing their piano for them; and if the Buffaloes still met there it was only because Mr. Batup, their Grand Master, had a liking for old Tom in spite of his rotten ales.

As a matter of fact, most people liked Tom Sheather, though it was agreed that you could never quite trust him, and that you felt sorry for his second boy Daniel, who was always having to play policeman to his dad. The eldest son was married, and had a sad little farm over at Brakey Bottom, beyond Telscombe, while the third boy, Christopher, was no good to anybody. His mother spoilt him, and gossip accused her of having kept him at home by disreputable means, when other women’s sons and her own elder boys had gone to the war.

The war had dealt hardly with the George. The suspension of racing, the limitation of the hours in which liquor could be sold, the no-treating order—all had been bad for the George’s particular constitution, whereas the Crown had thriven on high prices and a congested population. Also James Munk had money come to him through his wife, who at her death had left her entire fortune to his enjoyment and disposal. While Tom Sheather had none, for his parents at their death, shortly before the war, were shown not to have dealt very wisely with the landlords of streets, and of the little that they left, nothing remained after a few years’ fluency in Tom’s hands. It was obvious that he had not realized his ambition of busting the Crown. But if there was little comfort in the thought that he owed his failure largely to his own mismanagement, there was considerable alleviation in the fact that it troubled him not at all. He still thought the George was a better pub than the Crown—he would rather be in debt to his brewer and have a good crowd of boys round him, than be solvent and honourable like James Munk, and have nothing but a couple of old maids dozing in his parlour—which he had let off to them, so that he and his son Ernley had to sit in the kitchen.

Anyhow Tom was better off in his home and family than poor Munk, whose wife was dead and whose elder son had been killed in the war, leaving him with no one but Ernley, whom everybody knew was rotten—an officer and a gentleman, but rotten. Whereas Tom had a tidy little wife—even if she was growing a bit sharp-tongued these days and inclined to snap her old man’s head off—and three spanking boys: Len, who was clever as you made ’em, for all he hadn’t been educated at Lancing College like some folks’ sons; Dan, who was the stoutest, handiest chap between Lewes and the sea; and Chris, who was the handsomest.... He was glad they’d all three come safe through the war, and if ever he wished that the old George was a better paying concern, it was for their sakes.... He’d have liked to be able to buy Len some new machinery for that farm of his, which wouldn’t produce more than one quarter to the acre—and Chris had been badgering him for months because he wanted new breeches and leggings—and it wouldn’t have been a bad thing if old Dan could have had a boy to help him in the yard.... But there you were—times were bad for innkeepers, unless they were foxy like old Munk—and anyhow, it was good to have his three boys under his roof, even if he couldn’t give them all he and they wanted. He liked to see them sitting in his bar.

§ 2

They were all three sitting there that evening in February, just twenty minutes before six and opening-time. Len had come over from Telscombe to an auction at Tarring Neville, and was on his way back, disappointed because of high prices. Dan had just come back from Batchelors’ Hall over by the Dicker—where he had gone ostensibly to sell a pig, but really, as everyone knew, to court Belle Shackford. Now he was helping Christopher and his mother polish glasses in readiness for six o’clock. The three young Sheathers were much of a middle-size, but they were very different in face and colouring. Leonard and Daniel were both dark, but whereas the former had his mother’s sharp nose and chin, the latter had the broad face, short nose and wide mouth of his Saxon fathers. Christopher was blue-eyed and flaxen, with a weaker version of Dan’s blunt nose, and a sulky, inviting mouth.

There was a shuffling, scurrying sound outside, followed by a rap on the door.

“Go see who that is, Dan,” said Kitty. “We aren’t open yet.”

Dan unlocked the door, and revealed an ancient shepherd in charge of some muddy tegs.

“Hullo, Mr. Gadgett! What brings you round at this time?”

“’Tis gone six o’clock, Maas’ Sheather.”

“Not for half an hour,” called Kitty from the bar.

Mr. Gadgett consulted an elderly turnip.

“My watch says three o’clock, which means ten minutes past six,” he affirmed.

“And my clock says half-past five, which means half-past five,” said Kitty.

The old man heaved a deep sigh.

“I comed all the way from Brakey Bottom, and there’s a wunnerful lot of mud on the roads. Leastways it wur wunst on the roads—reckon it’s all on my boots now.”

“Poor old chap,” said Tom. “I can’t see any harm in serving him. It’s nearly opening time.”

“Oh no, dad, it isn’t,” said Daniel.

“Besides, if it was,” said Len—“even if it was only two minutes to six, you’d be breaking the damn law just the same. The law’s a fine thing, ain’t it, Mr. Gadgett?”

The shepherd looked confused and weary.

“Wot wud six o’clock, and two o’clock and ten o’clock, I’m wunnerful muddled.”

Dan felt sorry for him.

“Maybe we could let you have a cup of tea since it’s too early for beer,” he suggested.

“Well, you go into the kitchen and make it,” said his mother, “since you’re the only one who’s doing nothing.”

This statement was open to challenge, but Dan accepted it good-humouredly.

“I’m a fine handy one with the tea, ain’t I, mum? You come around to the kitchen door, Mr. Gadgett, and I’ll give you as good as ale.”

When he was gone, Leonard took his pipe out of his mouth.

“This is an all-fool’s game with the clock. I wonder you stick it, dad. If I was you I’d kick for my right to sell my own beer at my own time.”

“It ain’t my own beer, seeing I haven’t paid for it yet.”

“Maybe you could pay for it easy enough if they didn’t tie you hand and foot in your trade. I tell you, this sort of thing makes me sick. Us working like slaves, and getting nothing but abuse and interference ... they said ‘Come and fight for your country, and we’ll give you a country fit for heroes.’ Now they say ‘You’ve fought for your country—thanks—now get out of it.’ They tell us strong chaps to go and emigrate, and I’m——”

“Well, I’d do it for two pins.”

“Don’t you make him think of it,” cried Kitty.

“He won’t be such a fool. Besides, it isn’t the same for him as for me. He didn’t lose four years mucking about, though it wasn’t his fault, like some——”

“Now, don’t you go hitting at me,” said Chris.

“I’m not hitting at you. It wasn’t your fault, neither—and I’d never blame a young boy of eighteen for not choosing to go out and get killed. But I blame those chaps that hid in Government offices, and wore uniforms, and got a thousand a year, and call themselves major and colonel these days, and say to us poor fellows who were fools enough to get sent out to France——”

“Oh, chuck it, Len,” said Chris.

“You’re a fine chap to say ‘chuck it.’”

“You said you never blame him,” broke in his mother.

“No more I do, but he’s got to let me talk.”

And talk he did.

§ 3

Meanwhile in the kitchen Dan made tea for old Mr. Gadgett. He had none of the normal awkwardness and shame of a man making tea. The special complications of his life had taught him to be handy at most things. He blew up the dying fire into a roar, filled the kettle with fresh water, fetched tea from the caddy and a cup from the shelf just as efficiently and a good deal more graciously than his mother would have done. Old Gadgett watched him from the chair where he sat stiffly, as one unused to rest.

“You’re a wunnerful kind young chap, Maas’ Sheather, and some day if you’ll come around to my house I’ll show you what I ain’t shown nobody yet.”

“And what may that be?” asked Daniel.

“My teeth.”

“Your teeth!”

“Yes, you come around to my house and I’ll show you my teeth.”

“But I didn’t know as you had any,” said Dan, with a rather tactless stare at the thin, receding old mouth.

“No, there ain’t many as knows; there’s doctor, and there’s Miss Belle, and now there’s yourself—that’s all. I don’t go wearing them about the place. But I’ve a wunnerful fine set of teeth.”

“Got ’em at the hospital?” asked Dan, as he set the tea on the table.

Mr. Gadgett, with deliberate, shaking hands, emptied his cup into his saucer, and supped a few mouthfuls before answering impressively:

“No—not I. I made ’em myself.”

“Reckon that was smart of you. How did you do it?”

“It’s taken me nigh on ten year. They’re sheep’s teeth, wot I’ve picked up on the hill, and rubbed ’em and filed ’em till they’re a proper size. And I’ve strung ’em on two wires, and I hitch ’em around two old stumps I’ve got ... you never saw the like.”

Dan was properly impressed.

“Reckon you’re a hem clever man, Mr. Gadgett; and I bet you find ’em useful at supper time.”

Mr. Gadgett looked superior.

“Oh, I’d never use ’em for eating. They ain’t that kind of teeth—and I don’t say as I can rightly speak wud ’em. I wear ’em for the looks of things. Some day I mean to have my likeness took wud them in. But if you come around to my house I’ll show ’em to you.”

“I’ll come one day when I’m at Batchelors’. I’ll be proud.”

“Reckon it ain’t everyone I’d show ’em to. But you’ve done me a kindness to-day, Maas’ Sheather, and it ain’t the fust. I often wish as my poor Ellen cud see my teeth, for many’s the time she’s said, ‘If we cud only get you fitted for a set of teeth, maaster.’ ... Maybe it’s wot put the notion into my head, and I’m larmentable sorry she didn’t live to see wot I done. Howsumdever, they may have told her where’s she’s gone.... There’s my dog barking—reckon the sheep’s uneasy; I mun be off, or I’ll lose the moon before I get to Batchelors’. Thank you kindly for the tea, Maas’ Sheather.”

He went out, comfortable and slaked. It was now nearly six—a few more minutes would have seen him in legal enjoyment of a glass of beer; but, reflected Daniel, a cup of tea was better for these old chaps. He wished the George would provide it as a matter of course, instead of selling only brewers’ stuff. They’d never get on that way; but dad cared for nothing but messing about in the bar, and mother said she’d work enough without waiting on strangers.... Dan shrugged and whistled himself into his overcoat, then went back into the taproom.

“Where are you going, Dan?” asked Kitty.

“Just round to the Parsonage to fix that henhouse, and then I’ll go and see old Ernley for a bit.”

“You’re never at home. Is it not enough you going out all day without being out half the night as well?”

“The evening’s my best time for seeing my friends.”

“And a fine set of friends you have—a clergyman who has holes in his coat, and a young girl who already makes herself the talk of the place with your other friend; and he’s a lazy, fine, wicked, extravagant young boy, who rides about the country on a motor-bike and keeps an inn that he says is better than ours.”

“And so it is, if you go by class. I’m unaccountable fond of old Ernley, anyway. And reckon no one’s any call to say anything against Miss Shackford—for it ain’t true, and I won’t listen to it neither. And as for Mr. Marchbanks, he pays me for what I do for him, and it ain’t much.”

“Oh, you be off, then. I got Christopher to help me. Thank God I got one son who stays at home.”

“Thank God you haven’t got two,” said Daniel good-humouredly, “or the bills ’ud never get paid.”

“Now, don’t you get saucy.”

“He ain’t saucy, Kit,” put in his father; “he’s only reminding you that all his outings ain’t for pleasure. The boy’s a good boy, sure enough.”

Dan looked deprecatingly at his mother. He wondered what she would do if he took her in his arms and cuddled her. He had often wanted to, but something about her made him shy. She would not like it from him as she would from Chris. He had often seen Chris put his arms round his mother and lay his cheek against her shoulder.... He wanted to do that. But—well, he didn’t like to, somehow. He pulled his cap over the thick, shiny, black hair which was brushed back undivided from his forehead, and went out with rather a sheepish look in her direction.

“You’ll be back before closing time,” his father called after him.

“Yes, I’ll be back.”

His voice came to them with the chiming of the church clock as it struck six.

“Open the bar!” cried Tom Sheather.

§ 4

It was nearly dark when Daniel went out. A sheet of lingering red in the west showed up the masses of Fore Hill and Bullock Down, but the rest of the sky was a dim, lightless grey, pricked with a few stars, and the valley beneath was grey, with the river dark among the mists, save where its waters held one faint glimmer at the Shine.

Dan blew on his hands, for he was cold; but his work at the Parsonage would soon warm him. He must get on with that henhouse ... and if the bulbs were to go in, they’d better go in now. He wanted the garden to look nice by springtime.... It would want a bit of manure; he would see if he couldn’t get some from Place....

Bullockdean Parsonage was a big, ramshackle house, where the unmarried rector camped like some squatter in the vastness of the prairie. Its few tokens of care and ornament—that is to say, a bright blue gate and windows and doors in the piecemeal process of becoming blue, also an artistic flower-bed border of bottle glass and scallop shells—were the fruits of Daniel’s industry. Daniel “had an arrangement” with Mr. Marchbanks; that is to say, he had quasi-sole charge of the house and the garden for ten shillings a week. This worked out to the rector’s advantage in that he would never have found anyone else to do half the work for twice the money; so he was willing to put up with a certain growing eccentricity in the appearance of his domain. It also worked out to Daniel’s advantage, for he could come and go as he pleased, suiting his hours to the demands of the George. At the same time it helped lighten that house’s financial burden, for ten shillings a week, he knew, went far in his mother’s thrifty housekeeping.

To-night he stood for a moment at the gate, contemplating his handiwork with a satisfied smile. One of the lower windows was lighted, and he could see through its uncurtained panes a young man stooping over a writing-table covered with books and papers. Mr. Marchbanks was busy, and Dan had better get on with his jobs without troubling him.

Dan had an almost maternal feeling for Mr. Marchbanks, who had not been in Bullockdean more than two years. He came from a big church in Oxford, where, by report, he had spent his time in study and in writing books. Why he had chosen to leave it for the care of an obscure Sussex parish was his own private adventure. He was still, after two years’ residence, inclined to be shy of his country parishioners, whose ways were so unlike the ways of Oxford; and they, on their side, were inclined to look down on him for his lack of clerical state. Also, immediately after his arrival, he had made an almost fatal mistake. He had failed to see the devotional aspect of a composition known as White-Wilcox in C, which had been sung at harvest festivals in Bullockdean from the days they were first started. All unknowing the enormity he was contemplating, and having already made, without outcry, several small changes in the direction of simplicity, he abolished White-Wilcox’s crashes and quavers, and substituted plainsong. The earth shook, the skies roared, the heavens fell. More literally, the choir went on strike, the people’s warden joined the Wesleyans, and a protest was drawn up by the Oddfellows in the bar of the Crown, and then taken across to be signed by the Buffaloes in the bar of the George, providing yet another instance of the Odium Gregorianum.

Then Mr. Marchbanks made a still worse blunder. He retracted. Moved with pity for the simple souls he had offended, and realizing that he had really dethroned the local god, whose identity he had at first been at some loss to discover, he restored White-Wilcox in C to all his former glory. As he confined himself almost entirely to the repeated statement that “Lebanon skips like a calf, Sirion also like a young unicorn,” there was nothing that made him unfit for Christmas, Easter or Whitsun or other occasions of rejoicing. Once more his familiar arpeggios wheezed forth on the organ, once more Mr. Pilbeam’s alto took, even though it could not hold, notes above the stave, while cantori and decani became antiphonally calves and unicorns, and old Auntie Harman “joined in” as usual from her pew, and you heard, as usual, her nieces Jess and Maudie “shushing her down.” Mr. Marchbanks thought he had re-established himself. But, on the contrary, he had only doubled his error. His congregation would now more than ever talk regretfully of “the old days” which had been before he came. The “old reverend” would never have taken away White-Wilcox in C, but if he had, he would most certainly never have put him back again; he’d have seen the entire congregation Wesleyans first.

It was during these months of crisis that the rector and Daniel Sheather became friends. Dan had no special devotion to White-Wilcox, and he had never loved the “old reverend,” who had once thrashed him for putting a firework in the hinge of the parsonage gate. He was sorry for Mr. Marchbanks, who so obviously didn’t know his job, and so obviously wanted looking after by a sensible chap. There being no mistress at the rectory made him particularly vulnerable to the form of attack which Dan called “helping around.” He had soon obtained control of all the outside of the house and of the parson’s boots as well.

This evening he used the last of the fading light for planting bulbs—hyacinths and tulips, whose origin in the borders of Place Farm might have distressed the rector had he known of it. Then when it grew too dark to see he went into the shed, and, lighting a candle, tinkered away at the henhouse he was making. He had decided that Mr. Marchbanks was going to keep fowls, and had arranged with the chicken boy at Upper Barndean to supply him with one or two good pullets for a start.

§ 5

At eight o’clock he stopped work, put away his tools, locked up the shed and went quietly off. It was now very cold indeed. A snap of frost made the stars shiver above the black ridges of the Downs, and Daniel walked quickly, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat, and his collar turned up to his red ears. It was bad luck never having quite enough clothes to keep you warm.... However, it would be warm enough at the Crown. Ernley always had a good fire, and often a good drink of something hot as well.

The bar of the Crown was altogether a superior affair to the bar of the George. The sawdust on the floor was thicker, the windows were covered with cosy, bright red curtains, and there were one or two comfortable chairs about. Moreover, behind the counter stood pleasant Maudie Harman, with her slow, pretty ways and welcoming smile.

“Good evening, Mr. Sheather,” she greeted him. “It’s some days since you’ve been in.”

“Good evening, Miss Harman. How are you? And how’s auntie and your sister Jess?”

“Oh, we’re all fine. Jess is looking after Doctor Penny’s children now. She gets six bob a week and her dinner.”

“Say, that’s good! I bet your auntie’s pleased, with the two of you doing so well.”

“Oh, she’s pleased inside, I reckon, though she don’t say much out, ’cept that we’re hussies, for we both bought lace collars last week.”

“And uncommon smart you look in them. I saw them in church on Sunday.”

“Well, I tell auntie that we must dress a bit, seeing as everybody knows us.... Yes, Mr. Luck, two sherries in a minute.”

She hastily took her elbows off the counter and became professional. Dan saw that James Munk had come into the bar.

“Evening,” he said glumly. “Is Ernley in?”

He hated James Munk for a variety of reasons, the chief one of which was that he wielded a weapon against which Daniel Sheather, like most of his class, stood helpless—the weapon of sarcasm. He never knew whether or not the landlord of the Crown was “getting at him”; his simplest remarks were full of danger, his praise was barbed, his blame two-edged. Dan in his presence became a mumbling oaf.

“Evening,” repeated Munk, in tones of courtesy. “Ernley is in his room.”

“Well, I’d better go upstairs.”

“Yes, I think that would be the best way to get there.”

Munk did not like having the young Sheathers in his bar; his comfort was that they never stayed there long. Daniel was now half-way up the stairs, stumbling in the darkness, and wondering exactly where he had been stung. The Crown people were almost like gentry with their talk and their ways. The queer thing was that he didn’t in the least mind old Ernley’s imitation of a gentleman, though he hated his father’s.

He knocked at Ernley’s door. It was merely a consoling fiction of Tom Sheather’s that James and his son had to sit in the kitchen because their parlour was let to visitors. It was often so let, it is true, but Ernley would never have sat in it. He had a room of his own, a long, low, comfortable room that ran along the frontage of the Crown, and looked out over its sign at the village street. A bright wood fire burned luxuriously in the grate, showing the thick carpet and comfortable chairs, and Ernley’s bed with its warm quilt—lighting up his pictures and dancing on the covers of his books.

“Hallo, Dan! That you?”

“Hallo, Ernley!”

Dan came in and sat down on the other side of the fire.

“What’ll you have to drink?”

“Oh, I dunno.”

“May as well have the port out—you look cold.”

“It’s turned cold.”

Ernley fetched a bottle and glasses out of the cupboard. He was a tall, well-made, well-dressed young man, with a dark complexion and queer, restless eyes. He and Daniel had been in the same battalion of the Sussex Regiment. They had joined up about the same time, and they had been together in the second battle of Ypres, where Ernley had been wounded and gassed. Soon afterwards he had been given a commission, and his way and Dan’s had parted, but their friendshi—psuperseding a mere distrustful acquaintanceship—had remained. There was a world of difference between them—difference in birth, for Ernley’s mother at least had been well-born; in education, for Ernley had been to Lancing College and Daniel to the council school; and in character, for Ernley had queer, dark, hidden ways and moody adventures in which Dan could not share. But the friendship stood firm, built on a double set of memories—memories of childhood spent in the same village, of games and jealousies and quests, and memories of the black and ravaged soil of Flanders, of horrors and dangers and terrors and squalors, lit up by queer gleams of human laughter ... it was strange, thought Daniel, that he should have remembered all the jokes he and Ernley used to have together, about rats and dud crumps and the corporal and plum-and-apple jam, and should have forgotten all the rest—except at the distressed end of sleep.... He did not think Ernley had forgotten so much, and that was perhaps why he was often difficult and mood-ridden, requiring the whole of his friend’s toleration.

“Why didn’t you come yesterday?” asked Ernley. “I was expecting you.”

“I went over to Brakey Bottom. Len was that done over his pigs, and Em having a headache and all——”

“Which did you look after, Em or the pigs?”

“Both,” said Dan innocently. “I give Em her mixture, seeing old Len’s in a terrification, and heated her a brick, to draw it out of her feet; and as for the pigs, I tell Len straight they’ve got pneumonia, and he may as well kill ’em quick before they die.”

“Then there’s no use strafing you because you didn’t come to me, but I wish you hadn’t quite so many people to look after, or that you’d count me in as one of them.”

“I do count you in—not that you want looking after as much as some.”

“But I do. That’s where you make a mistake—you put too much stress on physical comfort. If a chap’s got good boots you never think there’s anything more he can want.”

“Well, you seem to have a lot besides boots. Howsumever, Emley, you can’t say I haven’t done my bit to help in other ways—it’s only that things being so muddled up these times——”

“I know—I know. I’ll never forget, old chap, how you worked through that awful business. By the way”—carelessly—“have you seen her at all of late?”

“I saw her this afternoon.”

“The devil you did—and how is she?”

“Oh, she looked fine.”

“Oh—I say, do you think she’s heard anything about me and Pearl?”

“I don’t think she has. Anyway, she didn’t speak of it.”

There was a moment’s silence. Dan broke it first.

“Are you still so keen on Pearl?”

“Of course, I am. The affair’s only just starting.”

“And she on you?”

Ernley smiled reminiscently. “She seems willing enough.”

“Going to see her again soon?”

“I’m taking her to a thé-dansant in Eastbourne to-morrow.”

“Lor!” Dan was impressed by this aristocratic wooing. Then he gulped a little, and turned red.

“Then you aren’t sweet on Belle any more, Ernley?”

“Good lord, man, no. I’ve cut that off clean. It’s over and done with, thank God!”

He got up and took a turn across the room, passing into the shadows beyond the firelight.

“She hasn’t sent a message—said anything to you, has she?” he asked, “because I tell you I’m through with with it all. I’ve had enough of kissing and making it up. I tell you it’s done with now. There’s no good her trying to whistle me back again.”

“She ain’t trying, Ernley. She never spoke of you. It’s only I’m thinking that if you’ve really stopped caring and have got someone else, I—I’d have a shot at courting her myself.”

Ernley suddenly stopped his pacing. He turned and faced Daniel, but as he was still in the shadow, young Sheather could not read his face.

“I’ve been sweet on her for months,” continued the boy, “but I wouldn’t speak a word, seeing as you hadn’t got properly shut of each other. It’s only when you started courting Pearl I thought it really must be the end.”

“It is the end. But you’re a fool, Daniel, if you think Belle Shackford will have you.”

His voice came cruelly at Dan. Ernley could sometimes speak like that—all fierce and cruel—but it was better than being sarcastic.

“Why shouldn’t she have me?” asked Daniel, much hurt. “I’ve got as much chance as anyone else, haven’t I?”

“I’m sorry, old chap. I didn’t mean to be offensive. What I meant to say is this—that we’re so different; it’s hardly reasonable to expect a girl who’s liked me to like you, and t’other way round. And anyhow, it’s only three weeks since our break. You’re a much more cynical fellow than I thought if you can expect any girl to console herself so soon.”

“But that’s just it,” said Dan sagely. “It’s the rebound. They’re more likely to take up with someone else in the first month than afterwards. Look at Mrs. Light, look at Letty Pilbeam—look at yourself, Ernley.”

Ernley flushed.

“I’ve had a sickener. It’s a relief to turn to a girl who’s not always tearing passion to tatters, who knows how to keep cool, and doesn’t always want to get more than she gives.”

“Come, Ernley, that ain’t fair on Belle. Reckon she gave a lot. She ain’t the sort of girl for you, that’s all, and I’m glad you’ve got a different. She couldn’t understand your ways—she’d no notion of putting up with you.”

“Thanks,” said Ernley.

“Well, reckon folks have always got to put up with each other. I’m not saying there weren’t faults on both sides. But I’m quite a different sort of chap—more comfortable like—more easy going—you understand what I mean. I’m as different from you as your Pearl is different from her—and if you like the change I don’t see why she shouldn’t.”

“Is there anything—anything in her manner to make you think she’d take you?”

“Yes,” said Dan confidently, “there is.”

“Oh ... it’s easy-come easy-go, is it?”

“No, Ernley, you misjudge her. It’s simply as she’s worn out, and I’m a comfortable chap. Reckon she don’t want no more passions, just a homely sort of affair as this ud be.”

“Are you able to marry her?”

“If she don’t mind putting up with the George, I am. Dad and mum ud have her and welcome if she’d help with the place—and though it ain’t fine, it won’t be any worse than Batchelors’ these days. And maybe some time we’ll do better—with Belle to help, mum wouldn’t be so set against us having a tea-place and apartments and all.”

“A damn fine life for her,” sneered Ernley.

“Well, leastways, I’ll be marrying her and treating her proper.”

“Now don’t start getting at me. You know why I couldn’t marry her—you know the way dad treats me—that I haven’t a bean of my own, and my only hope is to work round dad so that he takes me into the business. If Belle ud have waited we could have done it some day.”

“She’s not the sort as waits.”

“Evidently not.”

He came out of the shadows, and sat down opposite Daniel beside the fire.

“I tell you, Dan, being in love is hell—it’s like having your skin off—it’s damned—it’s—well, thank God, I’m out of it, and you think twice before you go in.”

“Ain’t you in love with Pearl, then?”

“Not in that way—never again in that way—my God, no!”

“Well, then, maybe I shan’t be in that way. I hope not, I’m sure.”

He stuck out his legs to the fire, and stared into it, silent and satisfied. He was glad he had told Ernley about his feelings, for until then he had had an uneasy suspicion that his friend still cared, and while there was a chance of that he would not speak to Belle. But now Ernley had practically said “go in and win”; he had also implied: “You’ll be likelier and luckier to lose.” Well, time would show that. Anyhow, Dan was not afraid of love. He did not expect it to burn him up as it had burnt up Belle and Ernley. He wasn’t such a combustible sort of chap. Maybe some people would say that what he felt wasn’t love at all. But it did well enough for him, and he hoped it would do well enough for Belle.

The clock in the tap-room below struck ten. Daniel sprang out of his dream.

“Losh! I must be getting back. I promised dad I’d be back by closing-time. It’s awkward for him if there’s anyone drunk and won’t go. Mother won’t have Chris chuck ’em out, and I ain’t so bad at it.”

He began buttoning up his coat.

“So you’re still wearing your army coat,” said Ernley. “I thought it would have been done by now.”

“So it is—done in, as you might say. I’d meant to get myself a new one this fall—seen it in Lewes—but mum wanted parlour curtains, and reckon her old curtains were worse than my old coat.”

“Would you like my British warm? Dad’s giving me a new one this season.”

“Ernley, old chap, you don’t mean it!”

“Of course I do—it’s not new, but there’s a lot of comfort in it yet, and if you like to have it, it’s yours.”

“Would I like to have it?” asked Dan. “Oh, no, of course not!”

He went home muffled in Ernley’s British warm. His humility in receiving gifts was one of the things that made their friendship delightful to both of them. But some people thought Dan Sheather was too ready to accept Ernley Munk’s cast-off possessions.

§ 6

The next day broke as cold as the night had been. An early frost had touched the Downs and given a faint bite to their pale colours, and the sun that rose behind Mount Caburn raked long orange beams across the Brooks.

Daniel was up before the sun, lighting the kitchen fire. This was his daily task, as his mother did not care these days for early rising, and the nondescript assistance known as “the girl” did not arrive till eight o’clock. So Daniel lit the fire, put the kettle on to boil, gave the cat its breakfast and went out to feed the fowls and the pony, by which time the house was astir, noisily shaking itself into activity. First Tom Sheather came thundering down the stairs, yelling after Daniel to ask if he’d remembered to order the sherry, as if not he’d have to drive into Lewes and fetch it; then Kitty Sheather shouted to her husband that she wasn’t going to fold his night-shirt, and he could come back and do it himself; and, last of all, Chris Sheather came yawning and stretching his supple limbs and laughing at Dan because his face was dirty.

“And I’d like to know what yours ud be if you’d been down raking out the fire instead of laying in bed like a lady.”

“Well, Daniel, if you grudge helping me, I know Chris will do it,” said his mother.

“I reckon he won’t. Nothing ull get Chris out of bed before half-past seven. He’s Miss Flossie Fluff of the Pinktights Theatre, I reckon.”

“D’you want to have your head punched?” asked Christopher.

“Yes,” said Daniel. “You come on and do it.”

Two hours’ hard work on an empty stomach had not improved his temper; besides, it always did him good to knock Chris about.

But the battle was not to be. At the mere thought of it Kitty Sheather threw her arms round her darling’s neck and burst into tears. She would not let him fight Dan any more than she had let him fight the Germans. So Daniel had to sit down unrelieved, and eat his bread and cold bacon to the accompaniment of his mother’s scolding.

“Whew!” said his father, after breakfast, as he followed him into the stable.

When the family “took sides,” it was always Dan and Tom on one side and Chris and Kitty on the other, though in his heart Dan would rather have had a different alliance.

“I sometimes think,” continued Tom, “that I shall have to leg it.”

“Leg it! What do you mean?”

“Beat it—sling my hook. I can’t stand being treated like this.”

“But you aren’t treated like anything, dad. We all have to mind mother. It’s I who got it in the neck this morning.”

“Well, I don’t see why you should, for you’re as good a boy as ever breathed.”

“I ain’t. And, anyways, it won’t help me much if you clear out. It’ll be worse having to stick it alone.”

“But I shan’t have to watch you sitting there being wigged for what ain’t your fault—me the master of my own house and not able to say a word.”

“It’s because you’re scared.”

“That’s just it—I’m scared—scared in my own house; and I won’t put up with it. I’m beginning to think I was a fool to leave the sea.”

“The sea! But, father, you’ve left the sea almost a lifetime ago. You’d never go back to it.”

“A lifetime! I like your cheek. Your lifetime, maybe, but not a man’s, not mine. I’m only forty-six, and as strong as a dromedary. I tell you I’m wasted here, having to sit and listen to my boy being slated, when I’m not being slated myself. I’m not master in my own house.”

“And would you be master on board a ship?”

“No, I shouldn’t. But I shouldn’t have a woman over me. It’s that what stings, having a woman ordering you about all day. It ain’t right. God made man the head of the woman. It says so in the Bible—and look at me. Am I your mother’s head? And she promised to obey me, too—and though she said it in French it’s just as good as if she’d said it in English. I asked the minister and he told me.”

“Father, I think you shouldn’t ought to speak so of mother before me.”

“Well, I can’t help it. I must let out before someone or I’ll bust. And it’s better than letting out before the chaps in the bar. You’re a good boy, Daniel. I say, what if you and me was to go away together and get a sea job? Then you wouldn’t have to stick it alone—and you’d like the sea, I know, for you’re handy as they make ’em.”

“Father! Have done, do!” Dan was aghast at such treason.

“Well, and why not?”

“You should ought to be ashamed of yourself. How’s poor mother to get on without us? and us leaving her in debt to the brewers and all—and Chris no good, and no woman ever fit to manage a pub. Father, you shouldn’t ought to speak so. I’m ashamed of you.”

“Lor! you’ve got your mother’s own tongue. You take after her in that way if you don’t in no other. Reckon I’m to be pitied. Howsumever, I shan’t ask you for any more sympathy.”

“Oh, father, I’m ready enough if it’s only sympathy you’re wanting. But when you talk like that about going away, all I can say is that it’s wicked.”

“Well, I won’t talk about it any more, since you feel bad about it.”

“And you won’t do anything, neither?”

“Not I. What should I do now after twenty-five years ashore? I was only joking, and wishing I hadn’t been such a mortal fool as to—howsumever, you’d say that was wicked too.”

CHAPTER TWO

§ 1

Daniel had not remembered to order the sherry, so most of the morning was spent in driving in to Lewes to fetch it. Spot, the pony, was eighteen years old, and the trap must have been about twice as old as that, so the equipage lacked both speed and smartness. None the less Dan enjoyed the jog-trot over the Valley road, past Iford and Spring Barn and all the flat wildness of the Brooks, even though at least fifty motor-cars must have passed him and covered him with dust.

“Nearly got done in, Spot, that time—nearly sent west the two of us. Yah, you brute—I’ve got your number”—at the whisking rear of a Rolls-Royce—“road-hog, that’s what you are, ain’t he, Spot?”

After some mutual impoliteness with the wine-merchant, whose bill had not been paid, Dan brought back the sherry, and took his stand in the bar. He generally worked in the bar of mornings, to make up for his evenings elsewhere. The mornings were comparatively sedate—a stray labourer or two, or a tramp with the price of a pint on him, and generally a lot of conversation. Outside the Crown a comfortable couple of gigs were drowsing, but the George’s patrons usually came on foot, except at race time.

At last the clock struck two, sign of banishment or liberation, according to one’s circumstances and point of view. Dan came into the kitchen whistling, and buttoning Ernley’s British warm up to his chin.

“Where you going now, Dan?” asked his mother.

“Over to Batchelors’. They asked me to tea.”

“And when ull you be back?”

“Not till closing time. I promised Len I’d have supper with them.”

“Why, the boy’s never at home.”

“Well, mum—seeing as I’ve been on your jobs all the morning——”

“Oh, yes, I know you grudge everything you do for me.”

“But I don’t, mum. It’s only, as I’ve told you, I must see my friends.”

“You were over at Batchelors’ yesterday.”

“Well ... say, is there anything you want me here for this afternoon?”

“Nothing. I got Christopher to sit by me. He don’t want any sweetheart but his mother.”

“He’s only a kid—not old enough for girls.”

“I don’t like girls,” said Chris.

“Well, you wait till you’ve cut your teeth.”

“Anyways, when I take a girl, I’ll take somebody fresh, not another chap’s leavings.”

Once more Kitty Sheather saved her darling’s beauty; but this time she would not have done it if she had not run between them, for Dan was really angry.

“He’s a swine to speak so—and I’ll knock his head off some time when he ain’t hiding behind your petticoats.”

“Well, you chipped at him first—with your talk about cutting teeth.”

“I don’t care what I said. He’s a swine to speak so. I ain’t taking nobody’s leavings. I—I——”

Daniel spluttered.

“Whose coat are you wearing?” mocked Kitty. “Isn’t that somebody’s leavings?”

“Well, seeing as ... well, mother, you’ve got no call ... seeing as I bought your curtains ... leastways——”

His anger was turning to grief and was choking him. He was only one against two this afternoon—his father having gone for a “lay down” upstairs—and he could not stand any more of it. He muttered something thick and foolish and went out.

The air of the Down cooled him. His way to Batchelors’ lay across Heighton Hill—first by the little chalky path that wound up from the end of Bullockdean Street, and then by the green faint track that crossed the ridge into the wider valley of the Cuckmere. Before him spread the curves and swells of the down-top, cut into clear strips of colour by the plough—brown and gold and delicate green, with the round eye of a dew-pond looking up to the sailing clouds. Dan watched the birds that came with flurrying, dipping wings across the bottoms, and they seemed to join with the sailing clouds and the spreading Down in giving him an impression of freedom and vastness, which healed. Something like this the sea would feel if he were on it ... for the first time his father’s mad scheme had an attractive savour.... But, no—it was foolish to think of the sea; he was a landsman born—besides he loved the land—and he loved pre-eminently two who lived on land—his mother and Belle Shackford. Neither of his loves seemed in a flourishing way just then—his mother thought of no one but her youngest boy, and he feared that Belle, in spite of what he had said to Ernley last night, was turning to him only because she wanted a contrast, wanted comfort.... Poor Belle! But that didn’t make his loyalty any less. He owed his mother service, even if she did not appreciate it; and if all Belle wanted was comfort, then he owed her that.

As he walked over the Down’s back, past the dew-pond and Five Lords Bush, he wondered how many times he had taken that way on Ernley’s errand. Often during the summer and continually during the autumn he had tramped to Batchelors’, to inquire, to explain, to reconcile. He had carried notes in his pocket, and messages in his head—he had had to bear the blame of Belle’s freezing, with occasional rewards in the praise of her melting. He had seen her angry, sorrowful, relenting, glad, tender, obdurate, despairing. He knew all her moods, all the changes in her voice, all the changes in her eyes. Surely he had never known a woman so well; and yet with all his knowledge he had come to love her—indeed, out of knowledge and with knowledge had grown his love. He had begun to love her before the autumn was well on its way—that is some weeks before the final quarrel, which, with one brief interval of reconciliation, had lasted over two months. And now he was free—loosed by Ernley—to go and see her on his own behalf. She had always a kind welcome for him, and he felt this could not have been unless she felt towards him pretty much as he had guessed and said. He did not flatter himself that she loved him as she had loved Ernley—but then he did not expect that, would scarcely have wanted it. He had felt the distant scorch of that fire, and he knew it belonged to an order of things he did not understand.

Ernley was right—it was terrible to love like that. Dan didn’t hold with the wickedness of it, and though he had helped, he had always grieved. Love ought to be a warm, friendly, comfortable thing—a glowing hearth, not all the house on fire. Though of course, if you asked him, he knew well enough all the wickedness was due to that James Munk not letting them marry, and keeping Ernley out of the business, so as he hadn’t a penny he could call his own. If Ernley and Belle could have married and settled down there wouldn’t have been all this flare up. For he knew Belle, knew her sort, knew that all the trouble was because she wasn’t a wife, and had been made for nothing else. Of course Ernley was different—you couldn’t say he was made for nothing but a husband. Still, old Ernley would have settled down if he’d been given a chance. Now it was too late—the house of love was burnt, and those who had tried to keep house in it wandered separately, searching for a roof.

§ 2

Batchelors’ Hall stands in the flat waste of fields between the Firle downland and the lower Dicker. It looks down on the windings of the Cuckmere through a ragged spinney, remains of the ancient state of trees with which it was once surrounded. Some hundred years ago Batchelors’ was still the Manor of the two Dickers, but during the last century it had crumbled from manor to farmhouse, as its estates waned from the holding of two parishes to a few hundred acres of indifferent arable and boggy grass.

To-day it stood unprosperous and untidy, a mere tenant farm, beautiful perhaps to the inexperienced eye, that can ignore fruitfulness run to waste as it feasts on lichened walls, great roof bossed with stone-crop, and those sharp, sinister gables of pre-Tudor imagining—but tragic to those with knowledge to see it as it was, forlorn and rotten, like one of the derelict trees beside the Cuckmere.

To Daniel Sheather the most wonderful part of Batchelors’ was its barn, flanking it on the west, and indeed a very cathedral among barns. Its acre of roof flowed red and golden over a hundred beams, supported inside by wooden pillars that made aisles of its vastness. It had the dim, sweet smells of an old church, and a church’s queer lights and glooms—it had little warm homely corners, and great arches and aisles and shafts of drifting light, full of mysterious motes, that raked across its darkness, and displayed like altars the piles of oats and hay and linseed, the root-slicer and the straw-rope-twister and other agricultural shrines.

Daniel would have liked always to meet Belle Shackford in the barn, to talk to her there in the homeliness and dimness of it, away from her family, away from her home with its cheapness and decay. But instead he had to see her in the sitting-room at Batchelors’, a room crowded enormously with cheap, modern furniture, the walls papered with a heavily striped black-and-white paper trailed over with roses. The same paper was in the dining-room, where they always had tea. The Shackfords lived in what they called the “new part” of the building—that is to say, a wing which had been added disastrously in the Regency. Here they had high ceilings and high windows with soaring sashes, instead of the low-beamed ceilings and casement windows that were to be found in the rest of the house. It was far too large for them to inhabit the whole, so they left the old, the essential Batchelors’, either empty or full of farmhouse and family stores, and lived in the rooms best adapted to the eldest Miss Shackford’s ideas on furniture and household decoration.

The family consisted of a father, three daughters and a son. Lucy was the eldest, a thin, smart girl, with a mass of carefully, elaborately dressed hair. All the Shackford girls had wonderful heads of hair, but Belle, the next sister, wore hers in untidy, tumbling heaps, like a stook of corn half-blown over by the wind. Indeed, it must be confessed that the whole appearance of Belle could have been described as untidy and tumbling. She was a big, tall girl, extraordinarily well-developed for her twenty years, with more pretensions to beauty than her sisters, but fewer to elegance. Like all the Miss Shackfords she was fond of clothes, and spent in finery most of the little money that came her way; but she was reckless in detail. Her skirts hung askew, her blouses gaped, revealing camisoles and chemises in whose integrity the pin had more share than the stitch. Daniel knew Belle’s underclothes by sight in a way which embarrassed his modest soul. The two other children were a rowdy girl of fifteen and a sedate boy a year younger. They had nothing in common except their teens and their derision of those sop-headed males who came to court their sisters.

Daniel approached the house with some diffidence, being uncertain which member of the family he would encounter first. Each would have a different attitude with which to overwhelm him. Lucy would be ladylike and superior, obviously comparing him to his disadvantage with her own suitor, who was a chemist’s assistant in Lewes. Nellie would make noisy fun of him; Tim would make a more deadly sort of quiet fun, and Belle would be just Belle—beautiful, blowsy, tragic, sweet and utterly confounding.

As it happened, he met their father. Fred Shackford was not a bad fellow, though all the neighbourhood said he was a damn bad farmer. He seemed almost to encourage Daniel’s courtship; perhaps because he saw that though young Sheather was inferior to young Munk in every point of position, education, breeding, air and wealth, he was superior in the one point of intention. His intentions were strictly honourable; in other words, strictly practical. He had every intention of marrying Belle and taking her away.

“Hullo! sir,” he cried cheerily from the doorstep. “Come to tea with the girls? They’re just starting.”

Daniel came in, breathing hard.

The three Miss Shackfords and their brother were sitting round the table in the dining-room with the black-and-white striped wallpaper. Lucy sat at the head in her best silk blouse, with her hair done a new way. Belle sat on one side in her old woollen jersey, which gaped to display sky-blue silk beneath, and her hair was done in the old way. Daniel shook hands all round, even with hateful Tim and Nellie, and sat down at the table, squeezed between Fred Shackford and Belle.

The conversation was colourlessly polite. It consisted chiefly of remarks about the weather and the pressing of the visitor’s appetite. Dan felt as sop-headed as he knew Tim and Nellie thought him. Belle always had this effect upon him, reducing him by her odd, mixed pressure of floppy beauty and keen tragedy to the likeness of a deaf and dumb idiot. She did not have it so much when they were alone; queerly enough he was never so overpoweringly conscious of her when they were alone as when he saw her in the midst of her family. It was when Belle joined with the others in talking to him about the weather, about the new sheep-dip they were going to try this year, about the prices of hops and wheat, that he found her utterly overwhelming. During the summer and autumn they had had many interviews of terror and intimacy, but these had never embarrassed him in the same way as this light rattling of the conversational counters round the family tea-table.

All the Shackford girls as well as Tim and their father worked on the farm, and their rough, toil-worn hands were in startling contrast with their silk blouses, lace collars and elaborately dressed hair.

“I’m dreading the lambing,” said Lucy. “I know what it means, with old Gadgett getting past his work and all. I’ll have perhaps half a dozen lambs in the kitchen. My, it’s a life!”

“I like lambs in the kitchen,” said Belle in her husky voice. “Dear little mites, it’s a happiness to give them their bottles.”

“I’ll remember that when the time comes,” said Lucy. “I don’t say I shouldn’t like to see them sucking if I’d time to enjoy it, but I haven’t, and that’s plain. There’s nothing makes you care so little about animals as farming,” she remarked, as a side-piece of conversation to Dan.

“I reckon there ain’t,” was his lame reply.

“Oh, I dunno,” said Belle; “it isn’t the animals I mind, it’s the work.”

“Animals mean work,” said Lucy, “especially when you’re like us and can’t afford a decent shepherd’s pay. We wouldn’t keep Gadgett another month if it wasn’t that he takes eighteen bob a week, and all the young chaps belong to the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, and think they’ll work from nine till four, as if a farm was the same as a factory——” She tossed her head to finish the sentence.

“Len’s getting a bit down in the mouth over Brakey Bottom,” ventured Dan.

“Oh, I don’t pity a man. I don’t see that there’s any cause for a man to get low because he has to work hard. But when it comes to girls, it’s a shame. Six o’clock I got up yesterday, and in bed at eleven, and to-day up at six again. I tell you my back’s aching. And I want to go up to London next week and see my feeonsay’s people. They live quite near Westbourne Grove, and always take upper circle tickets when they go to the theatre. Oh, I like London, I do.”

“I don’t,” said Belle, with a sidelong glance through the window at the dark flow of the Down against the sunset.

“Nor do I,” said Shackford, “if it’s going to fetch my girls away to theatres. Always gadding these girls are, Mr. Sheather; always after theatres and pictures and shops. All except Belle, that’s to say”—remembering his visitor’s Intentions—“she’s more fond of the country like. But Lucy—she’s sometimes in to Eastbourne twice a week for the shops.”

“And Belle, too, father,” said Lucy hotly; “she came with me both these last times, and spent a shilling more than I did. And she hasn’t any appearances to keep up like I have—engaged to a young man in good circumstances. I must dress up to my position.”

“Hold your tongue,” said her father.

The conversation was now showing signs of leaving those rarefied levels on which Daniel could not breathe; but just as he was almost beginning to enjoy it, Miss Shackford swept it back on to the heights.

“If everyone’s finished,” she said icily, “I suggest we all go into the drawing-room and listen to the gramophone.”

§ 3

This adjournment was all according to the local rules of courtship, and Daniel had no sense of frustration as he and the Shackford family sat stiffly round the room on the “tapestried suite,” while the ancient bell-mouth gramophone gave forth such strains as “The Rag Time Violin” and “Honolulu Lu.” The first stages of a wooing were always conducted more or less in public, and he knew that he had moved forward rather than backward from those solitary meetings in the lane or on the down, when he had pleaded with Belle as Ernley’s advocate. The family acknowledged his pretensions by thus surrounding him and entertaining him; he was a suitor publicly proclaimed.

Neither was he conscious of any outrage done to the old walls—to Batchelors’ dignity of casement and gable, to the manorial memories of the ancient trees, nodding now against the first stars—by the gimcrack of this new-style farmhouse-parlour, its noisy colours and sounds. His experience held nothing of the quiet old ways, of the old oak and chintz, of the farmer’s daughters in ginghams and sun bonnets. Those things he considered rather to belong to the old folk of the cottages, to old Gadgett and others like him, who had not moved with the times. The Shackfords were essentially up-to-date, which did not mean that they were better farmers than their forbears, but that they had somehow brought into the mellow sweetness and rotting dignity of Batchelors’ the air of strayed townees. One might have imagined the old house longing to spew them and their furniture out of its venerable maw, in which they existed only as foreign, fermenting substance.

Belle alone seemed to have a certain affinity with her surroundings. It might have been because her love of the Lights o’ Lewes, of cinemas and shops, was superficial rather than essential, that she had never craved for them except as means to an end, the end of love, seeking her romance in the lighted mouths of picture-palaces and under the dazzle of street lamps, as her grandmothers had sought it in the dark mouths of lanes and under the dazzle of the stars. Belle knew that love was slow-footed in the lanes but swift on the pavements in the light of the shops. It was up and down those golden pavements of Lewes, under the hanging nimbus of the town’s night, that she and Ernley Munk had first met and hunted each other. But she had been glad when the hunt passed out into the lanes and into the sheltered, reedy places of the Cuckmere. And now, when the hunt was over, when love had been caught and killed, she no longer wanted to go back into the town—she still preferred the quietness of the fields, the bareness of the Downs, the darkness of the reedy places of the Cuckmere.

To-night, when at last in a silence of the gramophone, Daniel rose to make reluctant farewells, she surprised him by offering to walk a part of the way home with him up the Down. This was not a recognized part of the courtship, and the freedom of the offer made him more doubtful than hopeful of her favour. Her family were surprised too, and not well pleased; they felt such forwardness might drive the suitor away. Poor Belle had always been too much given to freedoms.

“You’d never want to go out now—it’s growing dark,” said Lucy.

“I’ve been stuck to the yard all day,” said Belle, “and I want a stretch.”

She did not wait for out of doors to take it, but stretched herself as she sat there on the piano stool, spreading out her arms and throwing back her head, so that her strong, round neck looked like the trunk of a tree with the muscles at its base like roots in the earth, and her hair like flying branches.

“Belle!” exclaimed Lucy, and sniggered.

She rose, still stretching, to her feet.

“Come on,” she said to Daniel. “If I go now I can get a breath of air before it turns cold.”

Daniel made polite farewells all round, during which Belle huddled into one of the men’s overcoats hanging in the hall. Her hair was like a pale froth in the dusk as they walked through the yard, and out into the farmhouse lane which led towards the Down. Her face was dredged of colour and her eyes no longer held the warm blue sky, but the cold moon. Dan felt a little afraid of her, even though he was alone. He wondered whether perhaps she had come with him to give him a message for Ernley, to ask him to carry once more in his unwilling head words of submission and reconciliation. He had already carried so many, and one more would make too many now.

But she did not speak of Ernley, though after a time they fell into a desultory conversation. It struck him that after all she might have come out with him only because she was tired of the farm, tired of the yard with its endless small toils, tired of the kitchen and the parlour with their crowding and shrillness. She wanted quiet, she wanted coolness, she wanted rest, she wanted room. But she might have had these without his company ... then perhaps after all she had favoured him by coming with him. It seemed as if he, too, were a necessary part of her refreshment. He felt his cheeks glow, and he lost the thread of what she was saying—her voice beside him in the twilight was a song without words.

They came to the foot of the steep chalky path which ascends Firle and is known as the Bostal Way. Once no doubt it was a track on the turf of the hillside, now it was sunk deep, into a queer tunnel, which to-night was all black and white with the cast of its own shadows and the gleam of the chalk in the dusk. In the entrance of it Belle paused.

“I won’t go any farther—I’ll turn back here.”

She wasn’t going to speak of Ernley after all. He reproached himself for having lost any of the sweetness of her company in doubts and surmises. If only she would go a little farther with him and let him give himself entirely to the joy of her presence.

“Come up with me to the top of the hill—don’t go now.”

She shook her head, till her hair was like swimming light.

“No; I must get back now. Lucy ull want me to help with the supper—we have the men staying for it, you know.”

She was turning to leave him without handshake or formal farewell. Suddenly he knew he could not let her go till he had tried her.

His hand shot out of the darkness and took hers. He felt it warm and heavy in his—he pulled her to him by it, and at first, taken by surprise, she came, then began to hold back.

“Belle ... don’t ... I must.”

“No, Dan—oh, no——”

But he had pulled her to him and was holding her against him. He did not dare kiss her, but his body thrilled against hers, content merely to have it close, so that their hearts beat together.

Then suddenly her breathing thickened into a sob, she drooped towards him, seemed to melt into him, and the next thing he knew was that his mouth was holding hers—melting into it—the next that they had suddenly gone separate ways, he uphill and she down.

CHAPTER THREE

§ 1

All his way across the down, Dan shivered with that kiss. It seemed to have given her to him, without promise, without words. Or rather, it had given him to her—he felt as if till now his courtship had been on wrong lines, as if he had merely sought to win her, and now instead he had given himself. He had given himself to her in that kiss; he belonged to her now, whatever she chose to do with him.

His emotional history was simple. He had never been in love before. During the three years he was in the army he had received a fair amount of attention from girls; he had taken out girls, as his fellow soldiers took them out, he had kissed them occasionally when they seemed to expect it, but he had never felt deeply nor roused deep feelings. He had also—partly from a good disposition, and partly from practical commonsense—escaped any of those sordid adventures which the war brought into the experience of so many boys.

But now that kiss seemed to have reversed all his preconceived ideas of courtship, those ideas of the wooing, winning, possessing male. It had made him the servant of love. He saw his life given to Belle, whether she wanted his love or not. Hitherto he had rarely thought of rejection, and if he had thought of it could not have faced it. But that kiss had plunged him into an overwhelming humility.

If he had not been so humble, he would have been triumphant; for he could not think that Belle had not had her full share in that pledge. He could not believe that her lips had been casual or merely affectionate. It was she who had caused their embrace, their motionless contact, to flame into a kiss. Without her leading he was not sure that he would have dared touch her lips—her cheek, perhaps, but not her lips—the paradise of her sad mouth.... In the depths of his humility there was no room for triumph, but there was a dwelling-house for hope.

As he walked over Heighton Hill, facing the last gutter of sunset beyond the Ouse Valley, he thought of Belle as many things. He thought of her as a white owl, flying out of a barn, and drooping against him with tired, ruffled feathers. He thought of her as the lost pigeon he once had found and nursed into warmth between his shirt and his breast. He thought of her as the sea, far down at the mouth of the Ouse, beyond the masts that rise from it like spears—the sea which was so sweet and so rough, whose near shores were home and whose far shores were adventure, who carried men’s hopes to sure harbours or swallowed them up alive. He thought of her as the quiet Down, ridged with the scars of old battlefields and burying the dead in its heart. He thought of her as an inn, which had given houseroom to many before he came and whose last guest had been his dearest friend.... He was not jealous of Ernley, any more than a man is jealous of the guests who have been before him at an inn. For he knew that he did not come to Belle as the others had come, as even Ernley had come, as a guest to be entertained, but as the host—to keep the house.

He was glad that he was not going to stop at Bullockdean, but had the extra miles over to Telscombe and Brakey Bottom. He wanted to still his heart with more breaths of the night air before he had to join in the unrest of other lives. Belle ... Belle Shackford ... to most men the lovely, tawdry, easy daughter of a failing tenant-farmer, to Ernley Munk the fire that had laid waste two years of his life, to Daniel a frightened owl, a tired pigeon, a sweet and wild adventure, a friendly house. The strange thing was that Daniel knew all about the others, all that she had been to other men, and yet still hoped for what she could be to him. He knew that he wanted to be to her something that the others had never been, so he was not afraid that she would be to him what she had been to others.

§ 2

Daniel generally had supper once a week at Brakey Bottom. He was the representative of family intercourse, for Tom Sheather was too busy with his own tangled affairs to care to go much into the coil of his son’s, and his wife disliked the long, shingly road that wound over the barrenness of Bullock Down and Highdole to the final desert of Brakey Bottom, while Chris and Len were always quarrelling on the ever-fruitful subject of “What did you do in the Great War?”

Dan, on the contrary, loved mixing himself up with other people’s affairs, and was equally ready to help Emmy with the housework or give Len advice about the farm.

“Why don’t you shack out your fowls in the pond stubble? It ud do them good, and save you a bob or two in sharps.”

“That stubble ought to be ploughs by now,” Len would mourn.

“So it ought. But the point is that it ain’t. It’s stubble. And while it’s stubble you may as well shack your fowls in it.”

“What I want is a steam-plough. No wonder I’m all behind, with the little toy I’ve got—and the share for ever turning against the stones. It’s all stones, this farm; this is the sort of thing they give us ex-service men, and expect us to build a new world out of it. Stones. You could scarcely grow mustard and cress on the Brow fallow, and I can’t get decent machinery. The prices are wicked, and I don’t care to pay ’em into the pockets of greasy mechanics getting ten quid a week.”

“If I was you, I’d do more with stock than grain. The ground isn’t good around here, there’s no denying it—but if you had a few beasts——”

“And what am I to do with stock? If I kept sheep I’d have to get a shepherd, and I can’t afford his wages. And as for cattle, the farmers have been losing hundreds over cattle this year, thanks to government letting us down. I’d start a milk-round if I was anywhere near a road, but stuck out here——”

Dan would let him grumble on. Len had, in his brother’s opinion, been born sorry for himself, and the only thing that ever seemed to make him any happier was a good long cuss. So he seldom tried to argue him out of his troubles, though convinced in his own mind that they were outweighed by his blessings in the shape of wife and children, and though he found their recital tremendously boring, especially this evening when his heart was full of its own matters. He felt relieved when, after having pessimistically considered the cows, shaken their heads over the pigs, sighed over the oats, and given up all hopes of the barley, they left Len’s dingy little box of an “office” for the cheerful kitchen, with its leaping fire, flowered window curtains, and the colour and eyes of Emmy, as she sat in a rocking-chair trying to force her daughter Ivy into a clean pinafore.

Emmy was a cheery, buxom, overflowing soul, with warm-coloured cheeks and a mop of red hair. She gave her brother-in-law a hearty kiss, and told him to hold Ivy so that there might be some chance of her being properly dressed before it was time for her to take her clothes off.

“Wriggling like a little worm, she is, and not fit to be seen since she fell on that turkey’s egg—quite spoilt the front of her dress.”

“And quite spoilt the egg,” said Len, heavily sarcastic.

“Well, she couldn’t help it, poor mite, with those turkeys laying all over the place as you might say. She finds it and she says: ‘Here’s a beautiful egg, mumma,’ and brings it to me for a treat—and then she falls over the dog’s chain and her father spanks her.”

“Poor Ivy!” said Dan. “What luck!”

“I don’ mind,” said Ivy.

She was a stolid child with a jammy countenance. Neither of Len’s children could really be called attractive. Ivy had her mother’s moon-face without her animation, and Leslie had his father’s inheritance of the Le Couteur features, with an added beadiness. But to Daniel they were both charming—he thought them the prettiest, funniest kids he had ever seen, just as he thought Emmy, with her round face and peony cheeks, the prettiest woman—prettier than Belle, though he loved Belle the best. He took Ivy on his knee, and succeeded after a struggle in tying her pinafore strings, while Leslie tugged at his sleeve and whined for cigarette pictures. Then after he had searched his pockets for four penn’orth of bull’s-eyes he had bought that morning in Lewes, and given two cigarette cards to the rapacious Leslie, they settled down to a game of snakes and ladders while supper was preparing—a game in which, after some preliminary contempt, the father was persuaded to join, and in which he forgot his woes with surprising quickness.

“Now—come to supper, or the tea will be cold!” summoned Emmy.

“One minute,” cried her husband. “I’ll have won in two more throws, if I don’t get on to that damn snake on the last square but one.”

“If you get on the snake you’re to stop the game—I can’t wait while you go back.”

Unfortunately Len got on the snake, and the game of snakes and ladders was added to his list of grievances.

“They shouldn’t have a snake so close to the end—it isn’t fair, having to go back almost from the winning post. Anyhow, I don’t think I approve of these games with dice—teach the children to gamble, and we’ve got enough of that already in the family.”

“Dad doesn’t gamble with dice,” said Daniel.

“No, he gambles with silly race horses he don’t know anything about. I shouldn’t grumble if he was any good at it, but he can’t even give a chap a tip that’s worth having—I dropped half a quid over that Selling Plater he told me to back last meeting. Mark my words, Dan, he’ll have you all sold up some day or other—what with his bets and his debts to his brewer. Or, he’ll have his licence taken away for allowing betting on the premises.”

“He don’t.”

“Yes, he does—I tell you; I’ve seen slips passed over the counter.”

“Shush!”

“We’re all friends here; you shouldn’t let him do it, Dan.”

“I’ve never seen it, and if I had I couldn’t stop it.”

“It’s all very well for you to take it so easy, but if dad loses his licence and gets sold up, I tell you who can’t do anything for him, and that’s me. It’s hard enough to keep my own place going. I sometimes think I’ll chuck it up and take up fishing.”

“Fishing!” cried Emmy and Dan together.

“Yes—I might go into partnership over a trawler if I could put up the money. After all, we’ve got the sea on both sides of the family. Have you ever thought you’d like to go back to mother’s people and take up that sort of life? Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hook it from this damn country and go back to Sark.”

“Oh, Len!” cried Emmy. “You’d never.”

“Why not? Reckon we’d do better for ourselves over there, and sometimes I think I’d sooner be there than here. I can remember it a bit ... rocks, and fog-horns for ever moaning ... can you remember it, Dan?”

“Not I! Leastways, I remember a lobster’s claw I had to play with, if that’s remembering.”

“A lobster’s claw! What a thing to give a child,” cried Emmy.

“I want a lobster’s claw,” said Ivy.

“I want a lobster’s claw,” shrieked Leslie, and the conversation was swept into an orgy of scolding and pacification.

§ 3

It might not have struck anyone that Len’s and Emmy’s household was a particularly good advertisement for matrimony, but Daniel seldom left it without an earnest desire to get married and have an Ivy and Leslie of his own. At first this wish had been dim and general, a cloud that might settle anywhere; but now it had definitely fallen on Belle Shackford. He would like to see Belle sitting at his supper-table when he came home of an evening; he would like to see her undressing his children as he had seen Emmy undress Ivy and Leslie to-night. Of course, the domestic picture was a little blurred by the fact that for the first years of married life he and Belle would have to live at the George and bear with its intrusions on their privacy and romance. Still, they would have their own room—two rooms perhaps, for there was seldom any call to house travellers at night—which would seem all the more private and their own because of the family and tavern life surging outside. In his mind as he walked home was a picture of candle light moving over low beams, Belle’s face lifted into it, her hair streaming back into the darkness of the bed as he stood looking down on her with the candle in his hand.... It was a marvellously clear picture, the only one his imagination held as yet of the intimate joys of marriage, and it brought a strange fog of tears into his eyes.

He reached home in time to persuade the mate and master of a Newhaven trawler that it would be wisdom to leave the bar before the carrier’s ’bus went town-wards for the last time. Dan had a good persuasive way with drunks and seldom had occasion to use more than his tongue, though he was ready enough with hand and knee when the situation really demanded it. “I never saw anyone run out a chap more neat than Daniel Sheather,” was the verdict of the ploughman of Upper Barndean.

When he had helped his father tidy the place and lock up he was free to go to bed. His bedroom was a primitive matter, for of his own choice he still slept in his childhood’s little room, hoping that the larger ones might entice guests and raise the George from mere tavern level. He slept under the droop of the George’s eaves—outside a far view towards the Downs that make the Gate of Lewes, inside a cot-bed, a chest of drawers with a jug and basin upon it, and one or two hooks on the wall. To-night there was nothing either outside or in to distract him from his rapid business of undressing and getting into bed. He had worked hard, he had walked many miles, his lungs were full of the open air; so in spite of the excitement thrilling at his heart he fell quickly asleep. All that remained of that kiss at the foot of the Bostal Way was a dim dream of candle light moving over the ceiling of a low-raftered room.

CHAPTER FOUR

The worst of having a secret is that, if you are of a friendly, communicative nature, it never lets you rest till you have told it to somebody, and then it is no longer a secret. Daniel wanted badly both to tell his secret and keep it, to eat his cake and have it. He nearly told his mother when he unexpectedly met her going downstairs the next morning—he had a queer feeling of treachery towards her, as if she would have hated to see another woman set up in the place she had never attempted to fill.

He put his arms round her neck and kissed her.

“What’s the matter with you, Dan?”

“I dunno.”

“You’re like a great baby.”

“I’m only saying good morning.”

“That’s a new way for you to say it.”

“I’m sorry—I can’t help it, mum.”

He took away his arms from her and went out.

It was his “early day” at the Rectory. One of Mr. Marchbanks’ many peculiarities as a clergyman was his fondness for having services without any congregation. Every morning the little rasping bell of Bullockdean Church made a short clamour at seven, and the village priest stood before the village altar while the village yawned and pulled on its trousers and lit its fires. Apparently the thing could not be done if Mr. Marchbanks was quite alone, so three or four of the local youth took turns to kneel beside him in the cold morning shadows and answer for Bullockdean. By a process of the survival of the fittest, three mornings out of the seven had fallen to Daniel’s share. Afterwards he would have breakfast at the Rectory and do one or two jobs about the place before going home.

To-day he was a little flurried over his duties. In church he stammered and gabbled and forgot his “piece”—and at the Parsonage he burnt the boiled eggs, which, as everybody knows, is an achievement usually beyond the reach of the worst cook. The lady who “helped” at the Rectory was often late, and Daniel was used to cooking the breakfast as well as eating it. He was, as he put it, “fond of messing about,” and certainly did not as a rule produce a worse meal than Mrs. Ades herself. But this morning he was demoralized, and not only brought an incinerated breakfast to the table, but ate it heedlessly, without comment or grimace. His friend could see that something was on his mind and very near his tongue.

“Mr. Marchbanks, have you ever been to Batchelors’ Hall?”

“No, never; but I’ve met Shackford on one or two occasions.”

“Ever met the girls—Lucy and—er—Belle?”

“I met Belle once out walking with young Munk, and he introduced me. But I haven’t seen her since.”

“Oh, then you’d ...” Dan’s cheeks and tongue were burning. “I say....”

“Well?”

“What would you say if ... I mean, how would you like to keep a pig?”

The clergyman looked startled. Was this the fruit of Dan’s soul in travail?

“I shouldn’t like it at all.”

“I’d take care of him for you, and you could feed him on scraps and waste ... or get a sow and mate her, and we’d make money out of the litters.”

In spite of various efforts on Mr. Marchbanks’ side and several temptations on his own he stuck to pigs till the end of breakfast.

Even by then the “help” had not arrived, and Dan, who could never quite see where a man’s work ended and a woman’s began, proceeded to a frenzied washing up and an unceremonious making of the priest’s bed by pulling down the blankets. He was smoothing the quilt over his handiwork when a ring came at the front door bell.

Dan thundered downstairs to open it, and found Jess Harman on the step with Dr. Penny’s twins in a push-cart beside her.

“Hallo, Dan! I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Mrs. Ades hasn’t come, and I’m doing her work.”

Jess, who had as pleasant a smile as her sister Maudie, grinned widely in derision.

“I reckon you are. I reckon you’ve smashed the plates——”

“I haven’t!”

“And just pulled down the cover over the bed and thought you’d made it.”

Dan blushed guiltily.

“And have you emptied the slops?”

“No.”

“D’you think they’ll empty themselves? Or d’you expect the poor man to empty them? Go on—you’re a fine housemaid.”

“Is it why you’ve called—to tell me that?” asked Dan saucily.

“No—I’ve got a message for the rector from Mrs. Penny. She says, ‘May she put off the carving class from Tuesday to Wednesday as her cook wants to change her night out?’—a verdible answer—‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“I’ll give it,” said Dan, turning into the house, “and then maybe you’ll come and help me with the work, since you’re so smart.”

“And what’s to become of the kids? I’m hired to look after them.”

“Bring them in, and we’ll find something to keep ’em quiet. Let me help you with the pram.”

Jess wanted only a little persuasion, and the twins were brought into the kitchen, while Dan went off to the study with Mrs. Penny’s message.

“It’s ‘yes,’” he cried as he came back. “He says she may go to hell if she likes.”

“I’m sure he never said anything of the kind.”

“Didn’t say it, but he meant it. He doesn’t care when she has her old damn class.”

“Dan, what’s the matter with you? You’re getting beyond yourself.”

It was his secret again, tormenting him in a new way. It had already made him sentimental, then embarrassed, now it made him uproarious. He took the boy-twin out of his pram and tossed him up and down in his strong arms.

“Daniel—a-done do—or I’ll go at once. You’ll hurt him—he’s getting frightened.”

“Not he! He’s loving it.”

The entertainment certainly appeared successful. Young Michael Penny yelled with delight, and his sister Lois yelled with her lust for the same experience. Daniel shouted with laughter and Jess scolded him at the top of her voice. The Parsonage rang with noise—the scream of children’s voices, the roar of a man’s, the scold of a woman’s. In his study the parson put his fingers to his ears and wondered why there were so many people in his house and what they were doing.

At last the clamour subsided as the twins, tossed into gratification and only just not into sickness, were given the cat to play with, while Daniel and Jess turned to the house’s need. Dan did not go out, as he had first intended—his secret still tormented him, and he longed to tell it to Jess. So he followed her about with brooms and pails and dusters, submitting every now and then to being told he was in the way and worse than the twins for getting under her feet.

Daniel had known Jess Harman all her life, which was a couple of years shorter than his. He and the two Harmans had gone to school together and had shared many secrets about frogs and toffee and the private life of Jess and Maudie’s joint doll. Daniel had been jeered at by the other boys and his elder brother Len for liking to play with girls, but though in time he had realized his own ignominy and withdrawn to more manly spheres, he had always been fond of the sisters, and on their leaving school the friendship had been resumed with the greater self-consciousness of adolescence. Dan had actually fancied himself in love with Maudie for a couple of months—that was just after she had become barmaid at the Crown and wore her hair in two great half-moons each side of her face and was considered rather a smasher by the local youth. He had never fancied himself in love with Jess, whose career had been a lowlier one in pantries and sculleries; but to-day he certainly did experience an overwhelming desire to tell her about Belle Shackford.

“Jess,” he asked, “have you ever been in love?”

“Have you been following me round the house on purpose to ask me that?”

“Yes—oh, Jess, I’m in love myself.”

She turned round and faced him, dust-pan in hand.

“You! Daniel Sheather! Who with?”

“Belle Shackford,” he said hoarsely.

“Well!”

Jess threw her hands in the air, unheeding of the avalanche that descended from the dust-pan. “Well!”

“Well, why not?”

He was angry now. He had told his secret and wished he hadn’t.

“Well, my boy—she’s been engaged to Ernley Munk for two years—and anyhow she ain’t the girl for you.”

“How d’you mean?”

“She ain’t your sort. She’s fast. You want something quieter.”

“She’s quiet enough for me.”

He thought of her for a moment as the pigeon in his breast.

“She’s—oh, I don’t want to miscall her, Danny, for I reckon she’s had her troubles; but you know she’s fast—you know the things that have been said about her as well as I do.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you don’t believe they ain’t true?”

“I don’t care if they’re true or not.”

“Then there’s some hope for you. If you’d said to me that Belle was just like the female in ‘be thou hard as ice and chaste as snow thou shalt not escape camomile,’ then I’d think you were just a poor loon that had to be protected; but if you’re going into things with your eyes open——”

“I am.”

“And how far have you gone?”

“No way at all.”

Since she was being so unsympathetic he would not tell her about the kiss.

“Then don’t go any further.”

“I’ve gone too far to turn back.”

“You say you’ve gone no way at all and yet you’ve gone too far to turn back. You are a loon, after all, Daniel.”

“There’s no good talking to you about it,” he said sulkily. “I’m sorry I told you.”

She melted at once.

“Oh, don’t say that, Dan. I didn’t mean to be short with you—but I was sorry to think of you.... Well, never mind. I wish you happy, I’m sure, though I don’t expect it.”

“Why not?”

“Because—well, I’ve told you before, and you didn’t like it, so there’s no sense telling you again. Besides, most likely, if she’s not the sort of girl for you, she’ll see it herself and say ‘no.’ And don’t think I shan’t be sorry for you, though I say it’ll be better if she does. I’ve nothing against her myself, but I shouldn’t be acting friendly if I didn’t tell you solemn that she’s not the girl for you.”

“Then who is she the girl for?”

“Oh, a more dashing sort of chap—the kind that’ll take her riding in the side-car of his motor-bike and give her tea at an hotel in Eastbourne, and ull dance with her sometimes, and buy her garters—a chap like Ernley Munk. All the Shackford girls are like that—fond of pleasure—‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth,’ the Bible says.”

“Now don’t start preaching.”

“I ain’t. But there’s no harm in you knowing what the Bible says about Belle Shackford.”

“And about you too. You go to the pictures every time you get a chance.”

“Which is about once a year. Howsumever, I don’t say I shouldn’t go oftener if I could. Now, Daniel, you and me had better stop quarrelling, and go down and see if those kids haven’t baked theirselves in the oven or cut theirselves open with the kitchen knives or otherways lost me my place.”

CHAPTER FIVE

§ 1

At Batchelors’ Hall Belle Shackford lay on her bed. She was tired. All the morning she had worked in the house and in the yard, cooking and dusting, feeding and milking. They were short-handed to-day, for her father had gone early to Lewes for market, taking Tim with him, and the day’s care had fallen entirely on the three girls with the couple of elderly farm-hands. Belle did not as a rule get tired easily, but to-day she was worn out—not only in body but in mind. Her body ached with moving, bending, stretching and turning, and her mind was sick of pails and mops and brooms, of straw and milk and snouts and beaks. She was done.

Her room was a tall, narrow slat in the “new part,” partitioned off the hugeness of a Georgian best-bedroom, and looking out into the tops of Batchelors’ trees. The walls were bright with her clothes hung on them; she had no cupboard, only here and there a bit of curtain, from under which sprayed out the greens and mauves and blues of her attire—crumpled muslins of summer’s wear, frayed jerseys of this winter, bits of silk and lace in want of mending—blouses hung by an armhole, chemises hung by a shoulder-strap, knickers striding the peg with dangling frills—hats like flowery nests and hats like flaming wheels. She had a great many clothes—more signs of them protruded in coloured tongues from the three drawers of her washstand, where a silver-mounted scent spray stood beside the cracked white earthenware of her common use.